But former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis told The Daily Caller that  anti-fraud measures are needed to protect African-Americans from corrupt  political bosses — many of them African-Americans themselves — who run  Democratic Party machines in the South.

On Nov. 14, progressive Democratic Reps. John Conyers, Steny Hoyer, Jerrold  Nadler, Keith Ellison, Steve Cohen, Marcia Fudge and Emanuel Clearer, the chair  of the Congressional Black Caucus — along with representatives from several  advocacy groups — held a meeting to complain about what they say is the danger  posed by laws that require voters to identify themselves.

Artur Davis is unimpressed.

“What I have seen in my state, in my region, is the the most aggressive  practitioners of voter-fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and  barrel to the special interests in their communities — the landfills, the casino  operators — and they’re cooking the [ballot] boxes on election day, they’re  manufacturing absentee ballots, they’re voting [in the names of] people named  Donald Duck, because they want to control politics and thwart progress,” he told  TheDC.

“People who are progressives have no business defending those  individuals.”

Davis is free to talk publicly because he quit electoral politics in 2010,  giving up his African-American-dominated district to run for the Democratic  nomination in the 2010 gubernatorial race. He lost in the primary, and the the  winning Democrat subsequently lost to the Republican by 16 points, 42 percent to  58 percent.